Friday, January 20, 2017

Some writers have a gift that sets them well above the rest.
Being a teacher of writing as well as an author, Zeidel deftly augments her
natural talent for storytelling with sharply drawn characters, tight plots,
seamlessly woven research, and a high level of symmetry and macro/micro
structure.

I
was first introduced to her work several years ago, when I received The Storyteller’s Bracelet for review. I
was very taken with the mythological nature of the Native American–based tale
she told, so it was with great pleasure that I received this special release.

Engaging
the dogmatic/religious more than the mythological, Redeeming Grace centers on a family’s ongoing struggles following
the separate deaths of two children and their mother in late 1920s rural Maryland.

The
title character, the oldest daughter of a hardcore minister named Luther,
marries a somewhat older man, Otto Singer, to get her and her sister away from
Luther’s physically and emotionally abusive ways. His grief has poisoned his
mind and instead of being the kind-hearted family man and well-respected
religious figure of years passed he has become an abusive mis-interpreter of
the Bible.

But
all is not well as Grace and her sister Miriam move in with Otto and his
brain-damaged brother Henry, because, as good a man as he
is, Otto holds a terrible, terrible secret.

With
descriptions of Depression-era America that rival those of John Steinbeck, Cormac
McCarthy, and Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw
the Angel, and a subtle but inescapable resemblance to George and Lenny in Of Mice and Men in the relationship
between the two brothers, Redeeming Grace
examines the foundations of family and cautions that the ways in which we
interpret the Word of God and the stories of the Bible can be as destructive as
they are uplifting.

Perhaps
the greatest compliment that I can pay to this well-told tale is that I could
not put it down during the final third of the book despite surpassing my
allotted reading time on three consecutive days. I found myself genuinely
rooting for redemption, vindication, and forgiveness and Zeidel ratcheted up
the tension in the most delightful of ways.

If
you are looking for a well-crafted, insistently paced story with good old-fashioned
humanity and complex characters, I highly recommend Redeeming Grace. In an age of CGI and blockbuster building-bashing,
both on screen and in our literature, it’s all the more necessary for us to
engage with books like this.